{"id":605,"date":"2025-06-01T08:17:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-01T08:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itc-ns.nl\/?p=605"},"modified":"2025-06-03T11:41:34","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T11:41:34","slug":"doctor-who-the-reality-war-review-creatively-bankrupt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itc-ns.nl\/index.php\/2025\/06\/01\/doctor-who-the-reality-war-review-creatively-bankrupt\/","title":{"rendered":"DOCTOR WHO: The Reality War – Review: Creatively Bankrupt"},"content":{"rendered":"

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So there we have it; another Russell T Davies finale that feels creatively bankrupt, low on emotion and low on consequences or just about anything happen. I\u2019ve watched Final Reckoning<\/i> borrow so much from The Rise of Skywalker<\/i> I wasn\u2019t expecting the disaster of the JJ Abrams film to be a blueprint for Doctor Who<\/i> as well; but Davies has a track record of missing with these big episodes: arguably the last one he got right was The Parting of the Ways, but he comes into this one on the back of two of the worst episodes of the era \u2013 and doubles down with a spectacular mess of an episode that feels like Davies has well and truly had better days. <\/p>\n

It’s just so odd that his Doctor Who<\/i> has become so reductive when his time in-between the two runs was filled with gems like It\u2019s A Sin and Years and Years that did more with less. Here, he turns what was once appointment television into an \u201coh, I\u2019ll check it out when it\u2019s on\u201d episode \u2013 by having The Doctor be rescued by Anita from the Time Hotel in Joy to the World \u2013 remember that Moffat episode? \u2013 Only she now has an upgrade. The rest of the first act is about reawakening everyone\u2019s memories of the old world beneath Conrad\u2019s wish world and finding out that oh \u2013 Kate had a chip embedded in every UNIT operative to wake them up; raising several questionable moral dilemmas that almost make you think Conrad was right all along. Once Conrad is awake \u2013 the Ranis show up and try to recruit The Doctor to resurrect Omega \u2013 but Omega is defeated after eating the newly bigenerated Rani \u2013 you know what \u2013 I can\u2019t even with this anymore. It\u2019s just so painstakingly lazy \u2013 building up the Rani as this massive character who\u2019s so important to the Doctor\u2019s life to have her defeated by a five second Omega role; and essentially end on a two Rani\u2019s \u201cGoodbye from Me,\u201d joke that doesn\u2019t even answer so many of the burning questions that we\u2019ve had about her character in the run. Susan Triad is back instead everyone \u2013 look at her! <\/p>\n

The big conclusion of the arc is that they need to save Poppy, who is The Doctor and Belinda\u2019s child in the Wish World. She\u2019s wiped from existence after a false start and only Ruby can remember her because for some reason; only Ruby can remember everything. Reality isn\u2019t quite right when it\u2019s readjusted so The Doctor needs to sacrifice himself to pour the energy back into the world and readjust it. It turns out that Belinda was trying to get home all along to a child; her Poppy \u2013 not The Doctor\u2019s \u2013 100% human. This feels a complete reduction in her arc and a complete waste of space to relegate such a promising character to essentially the role of a babysitter, sexist and reductive in a way that feels befitting more of what was in Conrad\u2019s world than without it. Speaking of Conrad, I wasn\u2019t happy how they gave him more of a send-off than Mrs. Flood\u2019s the Rani \u2013 who\u2019s still out there, rendering The Doctor\u2019s consistent \u201cLast of the Time Lords\u201d drabble even more infuriating especially after the Capaldi era felt like the show finally moving on after all these years \u2013 and to see him happy as opposed to living with the consequences of his actions feels like a much weaker ending: what has Conrad done to deserve this? There\u2019s no redemption arc, no nothing \u2013 just Ruby being kind. Which I suppose is the point of it all.<\/p>\n

The 13th Doctor shows up \u2013 a real meta moment where 15 is surprised that it\u2019s not the other one; and I love the energy and delight that Jodie Whittaker brings to the role in such a short screentime. She relishes being The Doctor and her passion is evident \u2013 it\u2019s clear she\u2019s got a lot of growth; she\u2019s confused when 15 says that he loves her and she realises she should probably tell Yaz that \u2013 but 15 knows that she never will. It\u2019s a nice wrap-up to the Chibnall era, that in hindsight, just by this scene \u2013 is so much better than what we\u2019ve had in the RTD2 era so far. Flux<\/i> felt exciting, daring \u2013 if messy. There\u2019s none of that spark in The Reality War<\/i>. And now; there\u2019s no more Ncuti to cling onto the \u201coh, we\u2019ve still got more with Ncuti.\u201d We don\u2019t get to see him face off against the Cybermen, The Master or the Daleks \u2013 aside from the cameos in the early episode with the past Doctors. It\u2019s a missed opportunity as fresh as the new monsters and the focus on the Pantheon has been \u2013 to give Ncuti his own rogues gallery is a nice touch, but there\u2019s room for the classic monsters in there too. His Doctor will forever be known as the \u201cDisney Doctor\u201d, for good and for ill, especially if the Disney deal ends after this season like it\u2019s rumoured to.<\/p>\n

And then we have the most creatively bankrupt, lazy and misjudged regeneration of the era so far. Bringing Tennant back was fine for a special. Keeping Tennant on was misguided. Turning The Doctor into Billie Piper reeks of desperation \u2013 what happened to new blood, new faces? What happened to new actors? Who was so much better when it spawned Eccleston, Tennant, Smith, Capaldi and Whittaker who made the characters their own. Even Gatwa finally felt like The Doctor by the end.<\/p>\n

Now Billie comes in for a blink and you\u2019ll miss it Doctor role; and it doesn\u2019t feel like it\u2019s worth investing in a new Doctor when they\u2019ll only appear for a few episodes at most and barely be in half of them. The show relies on change to survive, but it lacks the spark and magic of previous Doctors \u2013 no longer is it an era \u2013 you couldn\u2019t call Tennant 2.0 an \u201cera\u201d, it just feels so cheap. Casting big name, gimmicky actors \u2013 even as great as I\u2019m sure Piper will be in the role, the problem has never been the actor they got to play The Doctor. The casting has always been great! Eras should be three series long minimum \u2013 everyone deserves so much more here. The whole reliance on UNIT has really dragged this era down \u2013 did we really need two finales where the bulk of it was set around the UNIT HQ; especially when you throw in The Giggle<\/i> as well? I get they have a set to milk but it feels a touch too much. <\/p>\n

If Russell T Davies is in charge Doctor Who<\/i> can never move on. It is reductive, nostalgia-driven, laziness that feels catered towards the shock and the puzzle factor of the Moffat stories without understanding why they worked so well in the first place. It\u2019s ultimately, just bad writing \u2013 a mess of a finale that wastes pretty much everything going into it and wastes the whole era of the show by the end as the previous episode was all dependent on the execution here \u2013 which was very much not it. <\/p>\n

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So there we have it; another Russell T Davies finale that feels creatively bankrupt, low on emotion and low on consequences or just about anything happen. I\u2019ve watched Final Reckoning borrow so much from The Rise of Skywalker I wasn\u2019t expecting the disaster of the JJ Abrams film to be a blueprint for Doctor Who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":607,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itc-ns.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itc-ns.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itc-ns.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itc-ns.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itc-ns.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/itc-ns.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":608,"href":"https:\/\/itc-ns.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605\/revisions\/608"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itc-ns.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itc-ns.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itc-ns.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itc-ns.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}